Protège Moi
by geanna
Summary: He sometimes wonders why she looks more and more like a stranger every time they meet. Gramber. Oneshot.


He sometimes wonders why she looks more and more like a stranger every time they meet.

In the beginning, it held the same feeling as stumbling across an acquaintance you couldn't quite put a name to but always felt familiar. Of course, the realization never failed him whenever cherry-red lips twisted into something wicked or she feigned innocence with the careless flip of her ever changing hair. He tries not to think about her often because frankly, she's just income to him just like any other lost soul that wanders into his alley.

Still, there's something particularly troubling about Amber Sweet that moves beneath his skin and causes his stomach to knot.

But how rude of him; it's always best to start at the beginning. A prelude works just nicely.

And really, this one is a fairytale to be sure. Not so much the kind where happy endings are assured, but instead where a lesson peeks its way through the cracks in the floor until becoming a living figure, placed at someone else's expense.

There once belonged a young girl who was born into a very strange but very powerful family. She cried and screamed far more than any other child should and scared away her mother, leaving her the apple of her father's eye. He coddled and kissed her and gave her the stars but that spoiled little girl cried and screamed some more and begged for the whole sky instead. Her father cherished and showered the pretty, little girl with many gifts to satisfy her cries until one day the little girl stumbled down a flight of stairs and ruined her poor, button nose. Of course, money nearly spilled from the man's pockets, and this posed no problem as he could fix his little angel with a simple scalpel at his side to aid him.

With her face better than new, it wasn't long before the girl became infatuated with the scalpel, wondering what else it could fix. She liked to look at the nurses who shifted throughout the house, wondering if the scalpel could shape the little girl's legs to look just like theirs. The father tutted at such an idea, taking the scalpel from the little girl and telling her she was fine the way she was.

The little girl grew into a young woman and found she didn't like the word 'fine' very much at all. One day, she painted dotted lines on her face where a surgeon should nip here and tuck there and finally stole the scalpel from her father in secret. She sliced her pretty, little cheek up too much however and called for her father to fix his precious daughter again.

The scalpel had made it all better and soon she couldn't stop fixing. Her father refused her at first, until she whined and whined and finally he relented and the woman began to change. Not much at all at first, but enough to be wary of something offbeat. The woman began to weep however as she had when she was young, wishing for more of the drug that kept away the pain.

Here is where we meet a man. A man struggling to live in a world that has no soul and is as distorted as the faces of its inhabitants. He steals from graves and hopes for something more but wakes everyday with the same inane purpose.

The man sees the woman in his alley and remembers her from the posters painted up on the walls. She's stumbling from side to side, sidling along the wall towards him as she sobs to herself like a poor beggar. Like a fool, he gets involved.

'There's too much pain,' she cries into her hands as he fiddles with the glowing vial in his pocket. He can see the steady drop of blood pace its way down her sweat-slicked neck from the stitches at her temple. A very _wealthy_ customer she could be, he thinks, and then proceeds to reveal to her the magic he wields.

'Zydrate comes in a little glass vial…'

It doesn't take long before she's buying him out and he's laughing through it all. Just another customer was all it began as. She staggered into his alley amongst the shadows and faceless moans with a veil to hide her familiar face, until eventually she's cat walking the rain slicked path between the ruined buildings with a sneer that hushes the voices in the dark. He marvels at her, holding out his gun in one hand while his other pockets her soul. It was a system they had going that worked quite nicely for him.

But the day she kissed him on the mouth and ran her bony fingers over his chest, he knew there was a wrench thrown in to their perfectly imperfect arrangement.

They sleep together and to be honest, it's one of the best fucks he's ever had. He's selfish and so is she. So they sleep together more, and more, until he's calling her pet names like 'lover', and she's dressing up a little more for him when she slides into his loft.

He knows he can't call her beautiful, because what she is isn't really her. She's a ragdoll of sorts; stitched and sewn together by the pretty parts of others and really, that's just repulsing in and of itself. Still though, he finds he kind of likes the way she swings her hips when she walks, and he smirks to himself at the way she chews on her thumb when she's particularly annoyed with something. He thinks that's beautiful, at least. That underneath all the mix and match therein lies a soul.

But really, it's too hard to tell these days.

The night Rotti Largo dies and the Opera is left in shambles, he arrives at the loft to find her already there. The moonlight is pale and she sits on the window sill looking out at the crumbling world.

He sits beside her, can see the marred, pinkish flesh of her face, bare of its skin.

'You know, I used to have brown eyes.'

She turns to him, artificial baby blues staring back at him amongst the soft tissue. He thinks he's staring at the real woman she is. Thinks this is as real as it gets.

And frankly, he's never seen her more beautiful.


End file.
